Scharldi, Nicholas, Hubisz, John (2004). Experiments Trump Precise Definitions for Teaching Science to Middle School Students. Physics Today. 57, Issue 1.
This article was simply two physics teachers argueing about the way a textbook defined the word acceleration. The textbook defined acceleration as "a change in velocity". This upset one of the teachers because he believed that the definition should be " a rate of change in velocity". One of the teachers believed that it was an acceptable explaination of the definition because there is no need to get too intricate with definitions with Middle School, or early level High School students. Then the article went on to discuss how Galileo did multiple experiments to decide what the proper definition for acceleration was. This lead the teachers to decide that using a definition in a text book is not neccesarily the best way to teach acceleration, and that the students would best grasp the material by conducting experiments of their own to best discover the phenomenon of acceleration.
I chose this article because it has a lot to do with what we have been reading in Gallagher, as well as what we have been learning in class. We have learned that teaching for understanding, and increasing the students inquiry will help the students grasp the big picture of the material. This article is promoting having the students conduct their own experiments to help them understand acceleration. We also learned in class that just because the children are doing a lab doesn't neccesarily mean that they you are teaching for understanding. It is important for the students to be able to use their own minds to make decisions about their learning, rather than telling them exactly how to complete the lab, leave room for the students to make some discoveries on their own. I completely agree with the teacher that believes that using definitions to teach some of the more intense topics in science is not the best way to go about teaching. It is important to give the students some background knowledge on the material, but it is even more important that in some cases the students investigate the material themselves, under some guidance from their respected teacher.
This article was simply two physics teachers argueing about the way a textbook defined the word acceleration. The textbook defined acceleration as "a change in velocity". This upset one of the teachers because he believed that the definition should be " a rate of change in velocity". One of the teachers believed that it was an acceptable explaination of the definition because there is no need to get too intricate with definitions with Middle School, or early level High School students. Then the article went on to discuss how Galileo did multiple experiments to decide what the proper definition for acceleration was. This lead the teachers to decide that using a definition in a text book is not neccesarily the best way to teach acceleration, and that the students would best grasp the material by conducting experiments of their own to best discover the phenomenon of acceleration.
I chose this article because it has a lot to do with what we have been reading in Gallagher, as well as what we have been learning in class. We have learned that teaching for understanding, and increasing the students inquiry will help the students grasp the big picture of the material. This article is promoting having the students conduct their own experiments to help them understand acceleration. We also learned in class that just because the children are doing a lab doesn't neccesarily mean that they you are teaching for understanding. It is important for the students to be able to use their own minds to make decisions about their learning, rather than telling them exactly how to complete the lab, leave room for the students to make some discoveries on their own. I completely agree with the teacher that believes that using definitions to teach some of the more intense topics in science is not the best way to go about teaching. It is important to give the students some background knowledge on the material, but it is even more important that in some cases the students investigate the material themselves, under some guidance from their respected teacher.
Anthony S.